CCA Opinion Editorial – PennLive 11-Part Series

Janaury 19, 2026

Following PennLive’s 11-part series, Virtual Dominance: How a cyber charter school has upended K-12 education in Pa., the opinion editorial below by CCA was published by PennLive on January 17, 2026.

Families didn’t abandon their school districts—school districts abandoned them

PennLive’s “Virtual Dominance” series purports to explain Commonwealth Charter Academy’s (CCA) growth. It treats that growth as inherently suspect and then works backward to try to justify that assumption.

If CCA “upended” public education in Pennsylvania, it’s only because families have become dissatisfied with the inflexible, unresponsive, and limited opportunities available through school districts and have sought out and appreciated CCA’s innovative and service-oriented approach to education.

The COVID pandemic created demand for educational options and exposed the shortcomings of brick-and-mortar and cyber programs offered by school districts. Families made deliberate choices to leave their local school districts because those districts failed to meet their children’s needs.

That central reality is never seriously engaged or explored. Instead, PennLive frames CCA’s enrollment growth as something that happened to the system, rather than something that the system caused or allowed to happen.

PennLive leans heavily on financial comparisons to create a sense of excess. CCA’s roughly $667 million budget is compared to the combined budgets of Dauphin County and the City of Harrisburg – entities that do not educate tens of thousands of students nor operate a statewide instructional program. This is not analysis. It is rhetorical inflation.

A more appropriate question would be: why does a school district, like Pittsburgh, which educates 15,000 fewer students than CCA, have a budget that exceeds CCA’s by more than $100 million?

PennLive’s articles claim CCA invested “more than $700 million” in buildings. The figure bundles a decade of capital expenditures – technology hardware infrastructure, a proprietary learning management system (edio), and curriculum development – into a single number. It ignores that these owned facilities replace leased spaces, reduce long-term operating costs, and save millions of dollars in borrowing costs.

In contrast, school districts routinely borrow hundreds of millions for buildings and athletic complexes without being accused of recklessness or secrecy.

But we are most concerned about PennLive’s reliance on the tragic death of a child as alleged proof of systemic failure of CCA.

The investigating district attorney cleared CCA of wrongdoing. The student was only enrolled with CCA for a few months and regularly attended classes with the camera on. By continuing to invoke this tragedy after law enforcement cleared the school, PennLive places CCA in a false light.

PennLive also characterizes CCA as avoiding transparency and accountability, particularly in areas such as state testing and student wellness.

CCA is subject to public audits, open board meetings, Right-to-Know requests, state oversight, and litigation – often driven by school districts more concerned about lost revenue than student outcomes.

CCA has always been at the forefront of student wellness. We annually train all staff on how to identify students who might be at risk and report concerns to the appropriate authorities. During the 2024-25 school year, CCA staff conducted over 1,500 home visits and made more than 1,670 referrals to county children and youth services agencies.

It is insulting for PennLive to claim that the families who trust their children to CCA have done so recklessly, or that the people who support these children and families – CCA’s educators, administrators, and support staff – have a callous disregard for their safety and education. CCA’s staff are mandated reporters, maintain regular documented contact with students, and escalate concerns when warranted.

PennLive also asserts that CCA resists mandated state testing. On the contrary, CCA fully supports mandated testing. In fact, CCA invests more than $3 million each year to administer required state testing. Skepticism of these standardized tests is bipartisan and widespread among families, school districts, and policymakers. Questioning whether outdated assessments meaningfully measure learning is not an attempt to evade accountability. It is a legitimate policy position that requires public debate.

Across Pennsylvania, families routinely report bullying, classroom violence, unhealthy learning environments, chronic disruption, lack of resources, and failures to protect vulnerable students in traditional school districts.

For many families, these are not abstract policy debates but lived experiences that make school unsafe, unproductive, or emotionally damaging for many children.

Families should be trusted to choose a public cyber charter school. and not have their judgment treated as naïve, manipulated, or uninformed.

CCA is not perfect. No public school is. But it is not a shadow institution, a corporate interloper, or a threat to democracy. It is a collective of public school teachers, administrators, and support staff that educates and supports public school students and their families with public dollars.

CCA has never taken a student from a school district. The district lost them.

If Pennsylvania’s education establishment is unsettled by CCA’s growth, the honest question is not how to rein it in, but why so many families felt the need to leave their local school districts in the first place.

Envying and criticizing your neighbor does not result in improvement. Change begins when we take an honest look in the mirror.